The gardening year

This gardening year went on and on and on. I wasn't exhausted like some years in August. I had done some very good work neglecting it so I just wasn't hating my garden. Still the week before Thanksgiving when I still was ripening and processing tomatoes I decided it was time. With the twins birthdays and then Thanksgiving and then Christmas around the corner I just really needed to shift gears mentally. Feeding the last of the tomatoes to the compost bin was just the thing. Every year I vow to document my garden harvest. Next year will be the year!! Here is the pic of the tomato sauce I preserved several times this year. My own garlic, basil, oregano, peppers and a few batches with only my own tomatoes.

What's growing in the garden

Raising veggies at the neighbor's

Raising kids in our back yard. Lettuce and spinach nearing its end for the season.

The other kids in my backyard!

The wild animals in our backyard! HA!

Growing food in the front yard

Julie Bass of Oak Park, Michigan is in trouble. For growing veggies in her front yard of all things! I have equated boobs to lawns now thanks to this issue. I know it is a leap for some but it just came to me so hear me out. They are both designed to feed us. Neither are meant to be augmented and boosted by additives and chemicals. They are not meant to be purely decorative. Our soil has a purpose; to grow food. Our bodies and minds have a purpose to nourish each other literally and figuratively. If there is enjoyment and things are pleasing to the eye then that is nice but not the sole purpose of either. Some may say we need to hide veggies in the back yard like hiding breastfeeding in the bathroom but that is not the way the world was meant to be. God didn't know we were going to all go and get all twisted, over-sexualized,and control freakish! OK enough wierd ranting that doesn't make sense to anyone who doesn't get my logic or humor/irony. Before you think I am totally wackadoodle, here is a more coherant piece I wrote.

Kate B. 1 week ago

Oak Park government is not living in our current reality. People need to be able to feed themselves and should be encouraged to do so. Here are a few ways she is helping herself and the world around her.
1. Doing what she can to feed her family rather than depending on government assistance to include subsidies. (You know much of the food we buy is subsidized via ag subsidies and oil company subsidies right?)
2. Not polluting her property and adjacent areas with herbicides or fertilizers needed to maintain a lush green grass.
3. Since she mentioned that it is organic she is also not killing off pollinators such as honey bees by using pesticides.
3. Not wasting water to maintain plant material that has minimal value such as grass.
4. Reducing her carbon footprint by sourcing her food from her front yard rather than the average 1500 miles. (It doesn't get any more local than your front yard!)
5. Reducing waste by not buying the equivalent produce at the store thus not wasting produce bags, cellophane, and styrofoam packaging etc.
7. Providing revenue to local businesses through the purchase of mulch and plant material.
8. Teaching her children to fight for things they believe in. (Government is suppposed to be for the people by the people.)
9. Decreasing her stress and improving her health through garden maintenance related exercise. (That is until the city decided to criminalize feeding oneself!)
10.Possibly most importantly she is providing an educational opportunity for young and old alike to learn about food production. There may come a time when those skills are needed given our country's penchant for war and oil.

June, at least I know where you went, I think

What happened in June? 10 day vacation with family at a rental house in the Outer Banks started the month off. It was fun, fun, fun. Well worth the effort and expense of travelling with 3 kiddos. Wish we could see Dan's family more. And so begins our recruiting efforts to convince them all to move! :)

We came home and played catch up. Had to dispatch a chicken who was laying internally. Easier than I thought it would be. GIANT hard boiled-ish yolk is about all the details some of you likely want.

I also started night weaning Flower to get more milk from Iris. Started harvesting spring crops like lettuce and spinach and rhubarb and radishes. Giant phallic French breakfast radishes that I was tempted to take a pic of to share. We went on two strawberry farm picking trips and picked sugar snap peas as well. 30 some jars of strawberry syrup and some frozen peas were the first things put up for the year.

We started toying with cordials. Brandy infused with cherries from our little neighborhood farmer's market. Elderflower/lemon balm/lemon peel infused vodka. Hoping to try get some green plums to make umeshu.

We also got our first taker on us harvesting fruit trees for free. We took home 20lbs of tart cherries after 3 hrs of picking that took me 3 nights to pit and freeze. We used some to make Vitamix "ice cream" and dehydrated some as well. My niece Sarah came to spend a few days so that was a whirlwind of picnics and local attractions.

At the end of the month Dan brought home a first bit of honey and comb that was being built where it shouldn't have been.

I hope to add a few more pics to this later.

And now it is July.

May sailed away too

May was full of planting, taking care of animals, worrying that my hubby might lose his job, and us preparing to take all 3 kiddos on a vacation to the Outer Banks over Memorial Day weekend. I'll have to do a whole post about our vacation another time. We also got to spend sometime with Grandpa Dan on his yearly trek through.


Planting raised beds, herb planters, and tilling up a new area to plant were the main gardening activities at home. At home we planted our many herbs, onions, shallots, lettuce mix, chard, spinach, beets, carrots, radish, peppers, and tomatoes. We tended our garlic and are so happy to have that for the first time in our garden.
We also took over a neighbor's backyard and had to clear the jungle and set up 7 raised beds and bring in soil/compost mix to get those started. We planted an herb garden, potatoes, cucumbers, beans, onions, radishes, carrots, turnips, cabbage, peppers, corn, several varieties of squash and tomatoes. We hope that it will be a successful garden and worth the time, money and effort.

My urban homesteading endeavors

Recently there has been much talk of urban homesteading and what it means. "To each their own" is definitely the correct phrase to use here.

So as a followup to my post about the "who" of our homestead here is the "what" of our urban homestead.

Several years ago I caught the urban farm bug. We don't have a lot of land. 50 feet x 128 feet to be exact! I started out with a vegetable garden. Growing more than I cared to eat. I love to grow but didn't know how to use nor did I desire to use much of it frankly! I love heirlooms and unique items. Some of the fun things I have grown are cotton, purple potatoes, fish peppers, dozens of varieties of tomatoes, beautiful eggplants. They were beautiful enough that consumption was just a bonus. I have flirted with the idea of being a small-scale seed grower or farmer but now am more family oriented and looking to be more self-sufficient.

When we bought our house I loved the raised sunny area calling for a garden (which the chickens now occupy) and the secluded bit of a hillside and envisioned a secret garden there. I started a veggie garden and finally was able to plant perennials like asparagus, rhubarb and chives.

For a while I got a bit off track and had a brief but intense affair with hostas. At one point I had somewhere in the neighborhood of 100 varieties. Boy those things can get expensive and while beautiful I have grown past them and envision one day they might share their space with bees.

From veggies I next endeavored to grow a bit of fruit. I started several Asian pears (remember I like different things!) to have all but one mowed over. Amazingly last year it fruited despite its bad location thanks to me. I had a small strawberry patch and rhubarb as no garden is complete without them according to my genetics I believe. For a few years this was enough for me. I was devoting a lot of gardening related energy to the youth garden program I started. After that it was devoting time to my first baby.

We have slowly evolved though in our life aspirations and quickly wanted to really kick it up a notch. I suppose a farm just isn't a farm without animals so in spring of 2010 despite having brand-new twins we got chicks. From there I started scheming for goats and bought 2 Nigerian Dwarf goats in the fall of 2010. We were a bit off track in getting them home for a while but now in 2011 seem to be on track thanks to my city councilman! 2011 has barely begun and we have ordered a fair amount of fruit trees and fruiting bushes this spring. Apples, and peaches, and plums, oh my! We have also added golden currants and grapes in the last couple of years. I hope to try out espaliering the apple trees this year. This should handle my preserves needs in a few years. Nothing like your own preserves mixed into fresh yogurt. :) The little things that make me smile. I also hope to really kick up our veggies this year. With the babies a bit older we'll see. We have a few hundred starts in the basement growing as I hope to cover the coop roof with an herb garden. Soon I will start peppers and tomatoes and the rest of the veggies. We have a lot of new things going on in the kitchen too. Hubby has started making bread regularly and I have made a decent stash of preserves all thanks to some great books for Christmas. We have a few things growing in the kitchen, too. Yogurt, kefir, kombucha to name a few. Soon we will have goats milk to play with making more cheese and soap. Iris just kidded and should be here within weeks. I really look forward to that new learning experience. The bees are in route and hives to be built this month in anticipation of their installation on a nearby property. And the chickens have just layed their first 8 egg day including a robin's egg blue that just started being layed this week. Eight eggs from eight hens, what more can you ask for! Things are looking up and spring is in the air!

CROPs training

February 28, 2009
So starting last Saturday I have started going to organic farming classes in Lincoln. So the two sessions so far have been interesting and invigorating. Not a lot of new information but still enjoyable. I can’t wait to start seeds soon. There is definately something very therapeutic about watching plants sprout and grow when it is still winter. Tips I learned this week..
1. For those tomatoes I have trouble with pick them when they are not quite ripe so that they will not cat-face.
2.Try to get early spring items planted the first week of April because they love the snow cover.
3. It takes 7 generations to stabilize a hybrid.
4. Only use your seed mat until germination; not needed through emergence.
5. Hybrids tend to fruit all at once…here I hated them and now I must admit they do have a purpose besides ruining our seed heritage.